Holy Spirit

I’ve been thinking about words lately, mostly because it seems I have fewer these days. Back when I first began blogging eight years ago, I posted every day, seven days a week. Over time that frequency diminished to five days a week, then three days, until, most recently, I settled on once a week. Some weeks, even one post feels like a stretch.

I’m not sure why I seem to have less and less to say. Maybe after eight years of blogging, 1,547 posts, 86 columns for the Journal Star, three books, and dozens of articles, I’ve simply burned out.

Or maybe I’ve said all I have to say.

Or maybe, in a world that feels noisier every day, I’ve become more discerning about what and how much I add to the cacophony of voices and opinions.

I’ve been reading Henri Nouwen’s The Way of the Heart. It’s a small book, but it’s packed with powerful insights. Nouwen has (ironically) a lot to say about the value of silence:

“Let us at least raise the question of whether our lavish ways of sharing are not more compulsive than virtuous; that instead of creating community they tend to flatten out our life together.”

Nouwen wrote those words long before the advent of blogging and social media, but I can’t help but read them through the lens of the present day and from my own experience as an author.

When I posted that quote on Instagram (again, the irony), a reader commented that she didn’t understand the last bit, the part about how shared words can flatten out our life together.

I’m not sure I totally understand what he means either, but I know from my own experience, I often come away from social media feeling flattened — numb, distant, distracted, fragmented — whether I’ve shared myself or read what others have shared. To me, there is a false intimacy and a one-dimensionality there, even as we strive for authenticity, depth, and connection.

Nouwen also writes about the importance of faithfully caring for the inward fire.

“It is not so strange that many ministers have become burnt-out cases, people who say many words and share many experiences, but in whom the fire of God’s Spirit has died and from whom not much more comes forth than their own boring, petty ideas and feelings.

Our first and foremost task is faithfully to care for the inward fire so that when it is really needed it can offer the warmth and light to lost travelers.”

On one hand, caring for the inward fire as my first and foremost task feels selfish to me. As a “Christian writer,” I feel compelled to use my gifts to share the gospel — to offer, to the best of my ability, a little light by which to see along the journey. Caring for my own inward fire — especially caring for it first and foremost — doesn’t feel self-sacrificial enough.

Yet here’s the clincher: that inward light is what feeds my words. If I allow my own inner light to be diminished or extinguished, my words will become a mere clanging cymbal — noisy and persistent, but empty of truth.

The inward light also feeds me. Without it, I am an empty shell without a pearl; a body without a spirit.

“As ministers, our greatest temptation is toward too many words,” Nouwen writes. “They weaken our faith and make us lukewarm. But silence is a sacred discipline, a guard of the Holy Spirit.”

I think I’ve mostly reversed the order here by trying to care for the inward fire of others before my own. And isn’t that, in some ways, irreverent or perhaps even blasphemous – to assume the soul-care of others is my job, rather than God’s?

I guess this is a long-winded way (again, the irony!) of saying I’ll be quiet in this space for a while – perhaps for the rest of the summer, perhaps longer. I’ve resisted this decision. For a variety of reasons I’ve tried to ignore the nudge. To stop blogging seems both unwise professionally and a little bit unfair to my readers, some of whom have been faithfully walking alongside me here the whole long way (bless you!).

Yet I also know it would be more unwise to keep pushing. I don’t want to become the person who says many words and shares many experiences, but in whom the fire of God’s spirit has died.

Thanks for your understanding and patience, friends. You are very dear to me, and I am more grateful to you than you will probably ever know.

At first thought, it doesn’t seem like the Holy Spirit could be stifled, right? I mean, the Holy Spirit is wind and movement and a force. It acts on its own accord. No one can predict where the wind will blow. How could such a wild, untamed presence be stifled?

But I’ve been thinking about this verse since I read it last week, and I’m changing my tune a bit. I think I can stifle the Holy Spirit. In fact, I think I’ve been stifling the Holy Spirit for a good long while now.

Let me explain.

I have trouble resting. I mean really, truly resting.

Sometimes I look like I’m resting. I might be curled on the sofa in a shaft of sunlight, a book on my lap. I might be out on the back patio, a cup of tea and a plate of biscotti on the table, my journal splayed open, a pen in my hands. I might be strolling along a winding path with Josie, oak leaves rustling in the autumn breeze.

But look closely. In all three circumstances, I am doing.

That open book on my lap? It’s non-fiction, probably something about spiritual disciplines or how to pray better or how to break through writer’s block.

The journal? I’m ruminating on a verse, prepping a devotion that’s due next week.

And that peaceful stroll? I don’t hear the wind in the trees because I have head phones on; I’m likely listening to a podcast.

I am always doing, never simply being. Even in my rest, I am still producing (or figuring out how to produce more). And in always producing, in always doing, in never being totally still and quiet, I am not truly open to receive the Holy Spirit. My propensity to do, do, do is not only stifling his ability to move freely in me, it’s stifling my ability to listen and heed.

Think about it. How can we be open to receive, to be guided and moved, to listen, when we are constantly on the move ourselves, when we are crowding our every moment with productivity?

How can the Holy Spirit have the freedom to flow when we have filled our every space?

Where is the space for that Wind to blow when we have crammed every corner of our lives? Where is the quiet to hear the Whisper when we allow noise to snake its pervasive tendrils into every moment?

You may not stifle the Holy Spirit in the same way I do. Perhaps it’s not productivity and noise for you. Maybe it’s worry, or overwork, or fear. Maybe it’s an addiction or pervasive shame, a tendency toward obsessive-compulsiveness, a propensity for material stuff.

But know this: while we all have the capacity to stifle the Holy Spirit, we also have the ability to clear those channels, to loosen the chains that bind his ability to work in us.

It begins with a simple question:

How am I stifling the Holy Spirit’s ability to live and move and breathe in me?

Did you know that if you are quiet and still enough, you can hear the sound of leaves falling from the trees?

That’s what I heard as I lay on a lounge chair in the corner of my back patio last Sunday afternoon. I closed my eyes, rested my cheek on my two hands, curled my legs into my chest, and listened to the leaves fall.

As the warm breeze blew the leaves light as petals from the tree at the edge of the street, I heard their gentle tap on the roof, the whisk as they brushed the window panes, the almost imperceptible crackle as they cascaded onto the concrete.

I felt them, too. Honey locust leaves tickling my legs and arms, landing on my hair and face as the warm wind skimmed the length of my still body.

When I opened my eyes, my head still resting on my hands, that’s what I saw from under the arm of the lounge chair. Honey locust leaves falling like shimmering confetti over the backyard, the whole earth blanketed in gold. It was so quiet, so still, it was almost as if I existed in another realm, in another state of consciousness altogether.

“We long for the evidence that there is more to life than what we can see and touch and feel, but how often do we pause in our physical, practical paces and let ourselves be spellbound by the living Spirit?” Erika Morrison asks in her book, Bandersnatch.

How often indeed?

For me, never. Or hardly ever.

I’ve always assumed I don’t have access to the Holy Spirit in the same way mystics like Teresa of Avila and Catherine of Siena did. I’ve always assumed I can’t experience the Holy Spirit with the exuberance and ecstasy of the mystics and the touchy-feely Christians. I’m not made that way, I figure; it’s not in my wheelhouse. I’ve always assumed I’m too pragmatic for that kind of mysterious, magical melding of the Holy Spirit and me. The Holy Spirit speaks to me in other ways, more practical ways, I often tell myself.

And yet maybe I am not experiencing the Holy Spirit in this otherworldly way because, as Erika puts it, I’m not pausing my physical, practical paces. Maybe I’m not allowing ample opportunity for the “supernatural realm to pierce my earthly life.”

Rarely do I simply be. Rarely do I sit and let my thoughts slow and sink down deep. My brain is always firing, planning, strategizing, almost like it can’t or won’t turn off. Even my “quiet time,” when I read the Bible in the early morning, is productive, for heaven’s sake. I journal. I take notes. I jot down verses. I make prayer lists.

I think the real reason I resist coming to a full stop is because I am afraid of what might happen, or more specifically, what might not happen, if I do. I’m afraid I’ll expect something and be disappointed when I don’t find it or receive it. And so I press on, bent on making my time of quiet and rest productive and useful and safe from all disappointment.

I didn’t plan that glimpse of gold I got on Sunday afternoon. It just happened that way, the perfect synchronicity of a warm afternoon, quiet reading, sleepiness, a comfortable place to lay my head. But when I paused my incessant practicality, when I came to a full stop and yielded to the moment without expectation, without any thoughts whatsoever, I was spellbound by the presence of the Holy Spirit in the warm wind, in the falling gold leaves, in the whisk and tap and crackle, right there in my own backyard.

Last Sunday, all creation exhaled autumn gold, beckoning me to exhale with it. Wide-open and quiet, I lay still and received.

“Ten Things God Wants You to Remember.” That’s what was written on the front side of the card, along with a list: “I am for you. I love you. I believe in you. I will not fail you. I will be with you. I will provide for you. I will bless you. I will give you rest. I will strengthen you. I will answer you.”

On the inside, my friend Mary had written a short note. “Not sure why I thought you needed this card,” she wrote in red ballpoint, “but I did. You are loved, friend!”

I was touched to receive a card for no reason from a friend halfway across the country. Real mail is nearly a thing of the past these days, so when the mailbox holds more than the scarlet Netflix envelope and the electric bill, it’s a banner day. After I read Mary’s note, I propped the card open on the kitchen counter, right next to the microwave.

“I really like that card,” Noah mentioned later as we sat side-by-side on the living room couch. “I like the words on the cover. They comfort me.”

I looked up from my book. “You mean the card on the kitchen counter? If you really like it, you can have it, you know,” I said. “If you want, you can keep it right on your nightstand, so you can read it whenever you want.”

Turns it, it wasn’t me who had needed the card.

My friend Mary couldn’t have known Noah needed to read the words inscribed on that DaySpring card. I hadn’t known. Noah himself probably hadn’t known. But those words were the exact message he needed to hear. And they were sent by someone he’d never even met, someone in Pennsylvania who’d simply obeyed a nudge, a sense that those words were needed out here on the Great Plains.

I think sometimes we assume that if our gestures aren’t grand, if our sacrifices aren’t radical, then we aren’t truly “all in,” we aren’t truly living for God.

We believe that if we aren’t founding orphanages in Uganda or digging wells in Kenya, we aren’t really living an obedient, sacrificial life, a Jesusy-enough life. When our service seems ordinary, we wonder if we are “doing enough.”

Now, I have nothing against founding orphanages and digging wells. If that’s your calling, if that’s where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet, as Frederick Buechner said, then I say go for it with gusto.

But if your acts of loving kindness and service are less dramatic — a little more Hallmark, a little less Habitat for Humanity — I say carry on with confidence.

Listen to the Holy Spirit and heed. Follow through on those subtle nudges, those gentle prods in your heart. Because you never know – as Mother Teresa once said, your one small thing may offer someone a glimpse of great love.

“Do not despise these small beginnings, for the Lord rejoices to see the work begin…” (Zechariah 4:10)

For the next six Sundays I will be posting the Sunday devotional that I wrote for my church’s Lent devotional booklet. These will be a little bit different than my usual style: a little more reflection and devotiony, a little less story-based. I’ll also start with a Scripture reading and end with a prayer. This is my way of stepping back from the blog a bit during this Lenten season – thank you for your grace.

That Sunday evening the disciples were meeting behind locked doors because they were afraid of the Jewish leaders. Suddenly, Jesus was standing among them! “Peace be with you,” he said. As he spoke, he showed them the wounds in his hands and his side. They were filled with joy when they saw the Lord! Again, he said, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I am sending you.” Then he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit…” (John 20:22)

Think about this for minute: Jesus gave the gift of the Holy Spirit to his disciples as they sat together on the evening of Easter Sunday, just hours after he had risen. The disciples didn’t do anything to earn this treasured gift. Jesus didn’t require them to perform a certain number of good deeds or even believe a certain doctrine. He didn’t even require that they profess their faith to him.

In fact, this very moment came on the heels of their betrayal of Jesus, just three days after they’d abandoned him to the Romans and allowed him to die on the cross.

But none of that mattered to Jesus. He didn’t hold it against them. Jesus simply offered his disciples peace, twice, signifying that he forgave them, and then breathed the essence of himself in the form of the Holy Spirit into them, no questions asked, no strings attached.

You know what’s even more amazing about this story? Jesus does the same for each one of us.

We all make mistakes. We all sin. We all separate ourselves from God through our thoughts, actions and words. Jesus knows this about us, and He loves us anyway – fully, completely and unconditionally.

We don’t have to jump through any hoops, prove ourselves to God, perform a certain number of good deeds, follow a certain set of laws or rules – we get the gift. Period. In spite of our past and even our present flaws, we get the gift of the Holy Spirit, no questions asked, no strings attached. Knowing full-well we will flounder and flail and fall, Jesus trusts us anyway. He trusts us with this most exquisite gift: himself.

Dear God, I am humbled by your generosity and your infinite grace. You know my flaws. You know my sins. Yet you lavish the ultimate gift on me, day after day after day. Thank you for trusting me with the most precious gift of all, the gift of the Holy Spirit in me, a gift I don’t deserve but still receive. Amen.

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Living out faith in the everyday is no joke. If you’re anything like me, some days you feel full of confidence and hope, eager to proclaim God’s goodness and love to the world. Other days…not so much.

Let me say straight up: I wrestle with my faith. Most days I feel a little bit like Jacob, wrangling his blessing out of God. And most days I’m okay with that. I believe God made me a questioner and a wrestler for a reason, and I believe one of those reasons is so that I can connect more authentically with others.